Armenia’s PM’s visit to Brussels aimed at creating positive background for upcoming constitutional referendum: expert

Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s visit to Brussels was aimed not at advancing the EU-Armenia agenda but creating positive background for referendum, director of Hayatsk think-tank Anna Karapetyan told Aysor.am, adding that he received no positive assessments from Europe.

“Everything, including the official press releases show that the visit was more important for the Armenian authorities than the EU, consequently, the agenda was Armenian,” she said, stressing that the key goal was to ensure positive background ahead of the April 5 referendum and be convinced that Europe will not voice criticizing statements about the legality of the process and pressures on the Constitutional Court.

The experts said according to the official governmental press releases the accent during the meetings was put on the implementation of reforms in Armenia, cooperation with the EU.

“It was important for the premier to get positive assessment regarding the referendum, but this assessment was not voiced,” Karapetyan said.

She said the domestic political agenda shadowed the other important issues on the Armenia-EU relations, adding that starting the contacts with the EU officials with discussion of domestic political issues and attempts to reach arrangements over them cannot be considered a positive launch for future cooperation.

The expert stressed that instead of discussing the implementation of Armenia-EU agreement, launch of dialogue on visa-free regime with the EU the PM changes the subject of discussion and quality of the cooperation violating balance and creating serious risks with it.